The Telephone Game
by Dr. Breifs Cat
Summary: Post XMen 186. Gambit has disappeared thanks to Sunfire, leaving Rogue in limbo, until a voice from the past comes through the telephone.


Disclaimer: The following is not brought you by Stan "The Man" Lee. Its just the rantings of a fan. Which means it amounts to diddly squat.

**The Telephone Game**

It was past three a.m. when the phone rang. Rogue had been as deeply asleep as she was able, stressed, exhausted and more or less dead to the world, so it took the second ring to rouse her enough to grab the receiver, pull it to her ear and say, "'lo?"

Unable to imagine why anyone would call at this hour, Rogue focused her fuzzy mind on the dream she'd been having. They always faded away so quickly and it seemed something worth latching on to; Remy had been there, but he always was these days. God knew he didn't seem to be anywhere else.

"What did ya'll do to him?" the voice on the other end of the phone demanded. Rogue wasn't nearly awake enough to place it, but she assumed this woman must be someone she knew, since she didn't bother with introducing herself or mentioning who she'd been looking for. Then again, it was Rogue's extension, so who else would answer? No one, because only Remy used to—"Allo, non, sorry, de Rogue ain't here." "Remy, gimme the damn phone!"—and he wasn't here anymore.

"Hello?" More awake now.

"I said, what did ya'll do ta him, Rogue?"

"Who?" Funny, but she thought she knew the answer to that one…

"REMY!" Yep. "Tante Mattie calls me in de middle o' de night, telling me to get my ass down to her place an' dere's some stranger flyin' an' draggin' Remy around, an' don't ask me how I knew it was Remy, 'cause he sho don't look right an' he's spouting nonsense 'bout bein' dead! What de hell didja do ta him this time?"

Bella Donna. Shiro took Remy home. Shiro took Remy home. Rogue catapulted herself out of bed, trying to remember where she might find a suitcase or a duffle bag or something. Or anything. A garbage bag would work. All she could really think about with any clarity was _Shiro took Remy home. I know where Remy is. Shiro took him home._

"Listen, just keep them both there. Ah'll be there ASAP." How long would it take her to fly to New Orleans with Sunfire's speed? Four, five hours? What she wouldn't do for super-sonic speed right now.

"Hell ya are. Dis guy says—"

"Shiro."

"Shiro says no X-Men, o' he'll grab Remy and take him somewhere else."

"If Ah'm not supposed to come, why'd call meh?"

"I wanna know what happened ta him. Shiro ain't talkin' and Remy only says nonsense 'bout being dead."

"Ah don't...Ah don't really know what happened," Rogue admitted. She knew more about Apocalypse's Horsemen than a civilian would know, but the complete picture as far was Gambit was concerned was still murky. "You musta seen the news, right? Apocalypse trying to get the humans to kill each other for him? He did something to Remy, turned him into a slave. Shiro, too. He said Remy asked him to, but Ah don't believe that."

The other end was silent, save some muffled noises now and then, like a tapping a microphone. Rogue assumed Bella Donna had covered the mouthpiece with her hand while she talked to someone else. Mattie, she supposed. The woman was a healer for the United Guilds, one who used magic at that. Perhaps she had more insight to Remy's condition than Rogue could guess.

"He says he did."

"What?"

"I asked him. Took a while ta get him ta talk 'bout more dan bein' dead, mais Remy says he told dis Apocalypse homme to make him a Horseman."

"What?"

"Says he don't 'member why."

"It's just programming, Apocalypse messed with his mind. Don't listen to him. He doesn't know what he's saying."

More silence. "He says its him talkin'. Says it be de truth an' dat he don't lie none."

A snort from Rogue's end. "We both know that's not our Remy." The two women had never bothered with talking about anything but him. They both were eager enough to learn more about the part of his life that didn't include her, so they shared their stories on a fairly even basis. Bella's thieving Remy of New Orleans and Rogue's heroic globe-trotting Gambit shared quite a few characteristics, but a propensity for telling the full truth wasn't one either possessed with much regularity. Matter of fact, Rogue thought she had a pretty good idea of when the last time Remy had been completely honest with Bella Donna. After he'd come home from that stint in the Big Easy, a name he disputed more with every visit, he'd ranted some about his ex not believing him, thinking he was jealous of her new boyfriend all things, when he was just looking out for her own good. According to Remy, the fellow was a renegade superhero—with a serious girlfriend back with his team—who had designs on leading the Guilds. After all that they'd been through, all that time, how could she believe someone she'd just met over him? He'd been right in the end and hated it. Being right meant Bella was hurting again and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Another pause. If she intended to review everything Rogue had to say with the man himself, why not just let her fly down so that they could at least do it face to face? Finally, "Are ya'll always like dis?"

"Like what?"

"Tellin' Remy that ya'll know what he been doin' better dan he does?"

"No." Rogue knew that was a lie. She told Remy what he was doing, what he wanted, all the time. Was what he said really all that unbelievable? Yes, yes, it was that unbelievable. Even if she could believe that he wasn't interested in sex with other women, she couldn't accept an X-Man willingly turning to one of their longest standing foes as the truth. For that matter, it wasn't as if X-Men being abducted and used as Horsemen was anything new. Apocalypse seemed to favor using their own against him, not that Rogue could fathom why. It always led to failure on his part. "Anyway, this is more complicated than that!"

"'Cause..if ya'll are jus' gonna start tellin' him what's goin' on wit' him, den I don't want no X-Men 'round him neither."

"So that's why Shiro took him away? To stop us big bad X-Men from planting ideas in his head?"

"I don't know what dat homme's thinkin', but if Remy's gonna 'member who he is an' stop whinin' 'bout dis 'Master' he keeps talkin' 'bout, den he shouldn't be with people who are judgin' him, he should be here at home with people who know him."

Rogue thought she could hear 'people who love him,' on the tip of Bella Donna's tongue. Instead of demanding to know whether Bella was accusing her of not loving Remy, she asked, "Can Ah talk to him?"

She heard a sigh. "I'll put ya on speaker-phone," Bella Donna told her, "but don' call him 'Remy,' he don't like dat." Rogue could hear some shuffling on the other end, a click, and then Bella Donna's voice: "Okay, we call all hear ya now."

"Hey..hey, sugah," Not being able to call him Remy made Rogue falter. What else could she call him? She refused to call him Death. "It's Rogue." She was happy he couldn't see her wince at that. No one on the other end said a thing. "Ya know who Ah am, right?" He knew when looking at her. Could he recognize just her voice? Would he even know what a telephone is?

"Yes."

His affirmative was a knife in her heart. Monotone. English. Why couldn't he have said a lighthearted 'oui,' the kind where she would be able to picture his grin in her mind as he said it?

"What's 'yes,' baby? Doncha speak French no more?"

"No. I have no need for it."

His dismissal of French as superfluous made Rogue realize for the first time that being with him right now was probably harder than being away from him. What's worse, it was his family that had to live with him as he regarded the behaviors and habits they all shared as meaningless. How hard was this for Mattie, who raised him? Bella Donna, who grew up with him, married him, divorced him, lost her memory of most of the time they spent together and was still the closest friend he had? Was his father there? What would Jean-Luc be thinking?

"Well, maybe all these nice people here would like it if you did."

"Perhaps."

"Speaking o' them, sugah, Ah'm getting a lil' bit self-conscious. Who's listening to us?" Whatever conversation they needed to have, miles apart with eavesdroppers wasn't the way Rogue wanted to do it. The two of them should be curled up in Xavier's school somewhere, trying to find somewhere where they could avoid teammates and students and telepaths.

"Famine. Bella Donna Boudreaux. Mattie Baptiste."

With Shiro in the room and his apparent X-Men ultimatum, Rogue could see why Bella Donna hadn't wanted to just give her the phone and let them speak privately, but she hadn't expected his hovering. She might have appreciated his protective streak a bit more if it wasn't separating herself and Remy.

"And you remember who they all are, sugah?"

"Yes."

"That's good…" Mattie was a sweet woman. Rogue was glad she didn't have to go through the pain of no recognition in Remy's eyes. "What have ya'll been up to?"

"Famine does nothing. Bella Donna Boudreaux had a negative emotional reaction and called the Rogue. Mattie Baptiste attempts to give me food."

"You should eat something."

"I do not know how to eat."

"Sugah, it ain't complicated. If you remember all these people, then you gotta remember how to do the little things people have been doing everyday since creation."

"Master altered my physical attributes. The task is not the same for me as with others."

The hand that was not holding the phone grabbed a fist full of her hair and tugged with frustration. How could a man with so little self-awareness be so stubborn? Why couldn't he come home and have Hank rework his insides so they were normal? Why did this have to happen at all?

"Don't you call that monster that any more! The only way Remy LeBeau would call a man master is if he's buttering him up for a con!" There was a mistake in what she said, Rogue knew. Death didn't like to be called Remy.

Too damn bad for Death.

"Remy LeBeau," Death repeated, followed by a pause, as though he was carefully choosing his words, "is very far from me right now."

Rogue felt the same way.

"Do not worry."

_Baby, you don't know how tall an order that is._

"I will find him."

The determined edge to his voice that overtook the monotone filled Rogue with hope. He wanted to know who he was, how to be that person again. And however grudgingly it was, she had to admit that Remy LeBeau lived and breathed New Orleans. If he had been in his right mind and bit with a bug that urged him to find himself, that's where he would start.

"Ah know you will."

She wondered how he would react to an 'I love you,' but was afraid it was too much too fast, that there were other people listening, that the knowledge could make him complacent in where he was, that it was just too big for right now. But mostly, Rogue found herself unwilling to say it when she couldn't look at him the whole time, gage his reaction, try to predict if she'd get a return of the sentiment. They had never been a couple that could throw out those words with the same casual air of commenting on the weather. She wasn't some old married woman who automatically said 'I love you' to her husband every time they spoke on the phone.

She found herself turning to a safer phrase that was somehow territory that was even more dangerous, even more uncharted.

"Ah trust you."

Remy didn't seem to have any words in response to that. Only three people were in any position to see him, head bowed and tears seeping. Rogue was not one of them; instead, she got the click of the phone as the switch was made back to the normal mode and Bella Donna's morose voice telling her, "Dat's enough o' dat, now."

"Ah should be there."

"I'll call when t'ings are better. I'll have him call when its better."

"Have him come home!"

"D'accord."

**Fini**


End file.
